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A Serbian's Vision 
of America 



Bishop Nicholai 

Bishop of Ochrida, Serbia 



A Serbian's Vision 

of America 






15 y 

Bishop Nicholai 

xBishop of Ochridi'Sy Serbia 



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FOREH'ORD 



Bishop Xicholai has just rctiniiitl to his itionst- of Orhrida. in sttulh- 
ern Serbia, after traveUing for three months thritutih the Uniteil States. 
He did not come to this country to ask for ani/ funds or relief, and he 
has taken nothing material hack with hiin. lie tidd me the dag after hi* 
arrival in New York that he had come to learn whether there e.rists in 
America that moral strength xchirh should be the accompaniment of great 
physical strength. "If so," he said, '•/ will plead with America to spend 
it as generously in changing the moral misery of Europe as she has spent 
her wealth in helping Europe's physical misery." 

In the folloTinng article Bishop Xicholai describes briefly what he has 
learned here. It is based on notes made during several long talks with 
him, as well as on a statement written by him for the Xew York Kx'enintf 
Post. It seemed to me that what Buihop Xicholai saiil regardim/ the 
xcorld situation and the implications that would follow .hnerica's adopt i^nt 
of any long-continued policy of self-interest and attempted is<dation could 
not be allowed to pass unrecorded. He comes of a race which is interested 
in fundamienfal causes; we are of a race ichich Li interested more in the 
study of effects, in the accvmulation of facts, in mapping out daif-bif-daif 
action. Perhaps the realists of modern America ran find souuthinti nf 
value among a philosopher's objective ideas. 

It is with the foregoing in mind thai the pn smt paniphh t has been 
printed for private distribution. 

ii.iMiL/o.x risii iirMsTHo.yt;. 

\>H East 36th Street, Xexv York. 

May la, 19;^1. •'•. • 



A Serbian's Vision of America 



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'E Europeans have been living in the greatest Imaginable anxiety 
to see what would be the first step of the new American Govern- 
ment, what substitute the new Administration would give the world 
for the League of Nations which it has rejected. Exhausted and crip- 
pled by the latest of many wars, we are afraid of new and worse 
things, in Europe as well as elsewhere, and yearn for some new in- 
stitution to lead humanity towards peace. The idea of the League 
of Nations having been abandoned by America and misused by Europe, 
there remains at present only one organized system, living and working 
by day and night for its ends, and that is Communism. At the mo- 
ment the chief propaganda argument of the Communists is that they 
are the only peacemakers, the only idealists, the only real workers, the 
only ones who are willing to go to all lengths in order not to see the 
world drift back to its old standards and habits. 

What is there to do in this situation? If the League of Nations 
is not acceptable, what is acceptable? If Communism is the only 
scheme in existence to-day which is being pressed vigorously, we must 
organize another scheme to combat it. I am amazed that nobody 
seems to think it necessary to propose a substitute immediately. One 
cannot talk of isolation. In every high school there are clubs whose 
members make speeches about humanity and study international af- 
fairs. Over the doorway of one school in the West I saw written 
rhe legend: "For the Service of Humanity." The world has become 
small, but it waits to be proclaimed a united being. Europe has ex- 
plored the world. Can America organize it? 

Organization! Organization! is the watchword of our time, 
but few seem to guess that organization of anything must begin 
at the beginning — with the organization of my soul and yours. The 
great religious teachers are foolishly called idealists and dreamers. 
In reality they are the only practical men in history. They did not 
care for any social organization while they still savv^ the human soul 
disorganized. It is the patent of modern statesnien to try and build 
a house upon sand — to try and organize the twigs and leaves while 
at the root the tree stands disorganized and unbalanced. Nowhere 
in the world is there at present a full and harmonious manhood. On 



A SERBIAN'S VISION OF AMERICA 



the continent of Europe the Slavs are in the main dominated by the 
power of emotionalism, the Latino-Germans by the power of intel- 
lectualism, and the Anglo-Saxons by the power of will. Nowhere 
is there a harmony of the three. Can America be this harmony, 
this plero/na of manhood? 

America is more than a nation. Technically speakinji, it is 
pan-liumanity, for all races and nations have a larger or smaller rep- 
resentation of their own blood and soul in this neu- ortjanism. I'he 
Anglo-Saxon powerful will and stern moralit\ are directing it. Yet 
America is not Anglo-Saxon. It is pan-human. After battling with 
each other at home, nations, embittered and exhausted, come to Amer- 
ica, there to become friends and take up constructive work. That is 
why the world has been saying that America now is going to surprise 
them with some great new scheme, something more democratic and 
constructive than anything they have ever known, something more 
helpful, something more American. Hut the eyes of humanity are 
getting tired and dim looking for the coming of the good messenger 
from America. And instead we hear murmurs of safety and trade 
routes and mid- Pacific islands. 

I divide the history of the white race into the history of three 
great "Internationales": 

rhe iirst was the Roman, or Jupiterian. It was frankly an inter- 
national system of subjugation and exploitation. 

The second has been the European, or quasi-Christian. In actions 
it differs from the Roman hardly at all, but it is less frank in that 
it uses pleasant phrases as a cloak — democracy, and libert\, ' and 
even Christianity. Its words are the words of Christ, hut its acts 
follow the law of Rome. 

The third "Internationale" should be tlie American. It sliould 
come before the worhl with a new scheme. Christian principles have 
often been proclaimed, but never \et used as the basis for a concrete 
procedure, as the basis for all relations, both at home and with other 
nations. That is what we now must try, for otlierwise I do not see 
the existence of the present civilization. 

You ask what induces me to think that America can proclaim 
this new scheme and can force its trial. I say that spontaneously in- 
stinctively, Pro\ identially. this continent has been developing two main 
tendencies. Charity and Constructiveness, which are the modern 
forms of the deepest principles of Christianity I am not blind to 
many American faults and b\ -tendencies. Hut since I came to this 
country I have been trying to find the main tendency, and that. I 
find, is very different from what it is in Europe. In F^irope when 
we dislike our neighbor, when we are envious of the five-stor\ house 



A SERBIANS VISION OF AMERICA 



which he has built to overtop ours, we go out and burn that house 
down ; in America you try to build a ten-story house. Such is the 
European revenge, and such is yours. We, in Serbia, built a ridiculous 
small cottage. Austria looked at it enviously, and burnt it down. 
The same is true of (lermany and France. Burn down ! 

I think 1 have demonstrated not only the need for a helpful con- 
structive scheme but America's ability to evolve one and set it to work. 
So much for my introduction. Even if the proposal I am about to 
make is of no value it may at least spur better brains than mine 
to find a better plan than mine to oppose the peril that confronts us. 
Why not found a World Construction Committee, in the formation 
of which America shall take a leading part, but which two or three 
of the other most rich and powerful nations also should be asked 
to support, each setting aside for that purpose a certain fraction of 
its piesent war budgets? Perhaps the fust three members might 
be America, England, and Japan. Let all of them divert an 
equal part of their war budgets from work of destruction to work 
of construction. Let their committee send out (as America has 
by herself sent out, though on an inadequate scale in view of the 
immense undertaking), engineers and doctors and financiers and 
builders to bring water to lands where no water is, to bring health 
to lands ravaged by disease, to bring financial order to lands disor- 
ganized and impoverished, to build up where all has been torn 
down, or where nothing worth building has ever been built. There 
is hardly a part of the world but has been exploited and crippled and 
is now reaching a stage of desperation and chronic dissatisfaction — 
Poland, Albania, Calabria, Armenia, China, Russia, Austria, Persia, 
Ireland, Senegal, Palestine, and the Congo, to mention just the first 
that come to mind. Turn the best thought, of the world to the task 
of curing these festering sore spots, turn its best energies for once to 
something positive and constructive and practical. 

I would not cut down the war budgets of the nations. I would 
turn them to better uses. Men must be^ taxed in order to be taught 
to give. It is very easy to teach men to be selfish and indolent; it is 
very hard to teach them to work and to be charitable. Since the 
world began men have been forced to give to war and destruction. 
They now should be forced to gi\'e to peace and construction. 

A European gentleman who has spent some time in England dis- 
cussing a great world political scheme has lately come to America. 
When he complained to me the other day that the United States is 
very materialistic, that the people over here will not listen to what 
he has to say, I told him that America knows only two things: Char- 
ity and business, or as Carnegie put it, the two G's — Get and Give. 



A SERBIAN'S VISION OF AMERICA 



Americans will listen if the_\ are talked to along those two lines, but 
to purely political schemes they will pay very little attention, re- 
m.embering that political schemes have ruined Europe and knowing 
themselves to be mere children beside the politicians of Europe. 
They are rightly wary of diplomatic wise men coming from the East. 

But the scheme I propose is based on charity and business, both 
in equal degree — on charity, because the world needs help frantically 
and our civilization will die without it; on business, because thou- 
sands of men sent by thousands of firms and vast accumulations of 
material would go out from this country and the other producing 
countries to establish prosperity and health and a system of self- 
supporting work in all the waste places of the world, ^'ou say that 
politics would creep in. Undoubtedly it would try. but the world is 
waiting for some constructive action with an eagerness and impatience 
of which vou can hardly conceive, and it would not tolerate political 
meddlitig once the scheme was proposed clearly and firmly. 

Wilson did one great service at least. He introduced America 
to the world in a new and truer and better light. Had not .'\merica 
come to be seen in this new light there would not now exist in the 
world the great expectation and hope of which I have been speaking. 
If America hadi remained out of the war. if she had not come in for 
the reasons whiih she did. Communism would have swept across the 
world without let or hindrance. So, from the first, there has been 
this conflict between what I have called the idea of the American 
Internationale and the idea of Communism. 'I'he battle must not now 
be allowed to go by default, and that is what a return to the old 
European Internationale would be, because ^hat system is finished and 
even now counts its last days. 

Surely you are not going to resume the old role I vised to hear 
assigned to America — "the dollar-making country." That would 
mean that you withdraw from the fight. lea\ing us nothing to hope 
in save the hopeless hope of Moscow. I do not believe you will 
do that. America is. indeed, a money-making countrw but is not 
that far better than a money-saving country? An American makes 
money enthusiastically, but does he not just as enthusiastically give 
it away? In some other parts of the world one saves rather than makes 
money, which positively is a greater curse. The war has indeed dis- 
covered America in a new light. America helped to finish a pro- 
lunged slaughter (how many millions of human lives she saved by 
throwing a way her fifty thousand!) and got no war booty. That is 
one thing. America prohibited drinking. That is another thing. 
America extended unprecedented charity indiscriminately to allies 
and enemies in order to help crippled Europe. Three feats, three 



A SERBIAN'S VISION OF AMERICA 



honors, three new revealed qualifications! Therehy she lias deserxed 
new attention from the five continents and a new definition. 

What is this new definition of America? It ou^ht to he: A 
pan-human society of men intoxicated with the constructive and 
charitahle spirit. Those who say "we are tired of giving" do not 
speak as real Americans (^n the old continent charity has had about 
the same meaning as tipping, hut in America charity has for the first 
time in history become a seriously organized affair. Are you really 
tired? Are you tired, then, of being Christians? Your charity to 
all suffering nations has surpassed the charity of many other countries, 
but it has not yet surpassed your war budget. If the expenses of 
killing human beings are greater than the gifts for saving them, where, 
then, is charity? What is a penny given to Christ as to a dollar 
given to Mars? The poor widow in the Temple is still punishing 
Empires with shame. 

After an earthquake, when your house catches fire, you cannot 
say: "I will now rest a little from the shock of the earthquake." 
America cannot rest, she cannot stop, she must go on — one way or the 
other, she must go on. She is at the crossroads. On one hand lies 
the way Europe has alwaA's gone — the negative, quasi-Christian way; 
the other is the way of human salvation, with new principles strongly 
affirmed, the way of charity and energetic constructive effort. 

I am not proposing Utopia. It is not impractical to say that 
in a time of staggering need men should join together to meet that 
need. A healthy conception of life must be offered at once to oppose 
and offset the unhealthy and unnatural internationalism of Moscow. 
It must not be imagined that Bolshevism is altogether weak and 
negative. Bolshevism expresses, though stupidly, two things — the pro- 
test of men against the double-faced politics of Europe and the world 
need for a world policy. That cannot be fought by silence, by stunned 
brains, by a vacuum, but by proposing something better and by strug- 
gling and fighting for it continually. 

In education patterns are more important than precepts. Na- 
poleon and Bismarck and Lenin are all patterns — patterns of Kaiser- 
ism. Europe is not suffering from Kaisers, but from Kaiserism, and 
it can be cured only by a system based not on nations or classes or 
individuals, but on pan-humanity. Your providential task is to be a 
pattern of pan-humanity and a proponent of its principles. 

The ignorance of the educated is a Chestertonian subject. It 
is a wonderful subject, but Chesterton is disappointing when he 
enlarges upon it because he does not know that the real ignorance, the 
fatal ignorance of Europe to-day, is that no positive scheme of life 
can he built upon the old. outworn negative procedure which rejects 



A SERBIAN'S VISION OF AMERICA 



Christianity as a motive force. I talked the other day with Tesla, 
the great scientist, who is also my countryman, and at the end of it 
he said: "I have studied all processes and all religions. The most 
practical scheme, the most practical religion, is Christianity." The 
most practical! There lies the real ignorance of the educated in 
Europe — they do not know that Christianty is a practical scheme, and 
have refused ever to try it. They have even failed to find practical 
words to interpret it. I think those words are the two words that 
America loves, Charity and Constructiveness — to do, to construct, 
to organize, to put in order, to give. 

From what causes have races and civilization gone down except 
from extreme impoverishment or extreme prosperity? If Europe is 
in danger of perishing from the first cause, America is in no less 
danger of perishing from the second. Is she going to care for 
herself only, to attend to her own interests only, to enrich and 
strengthen herself still more, and in all these matters to imitate 
Europe? If so, then the end of the world is not before us, hut be- 
hind us, and humanity is not existing only in a Paradise lost, but 
in a Life lost too. 

Well, my vision of the future of America is different. America 
is not going merely to repeat Europe. The main tendency of America 
throughout her history has been to exceed Europe in every con- 
structive work. In less than the span of a human lite America has 
in this become a super-Europe. Slie is going to become a super-Asia 
also. The light of the East and the light of the \Vest will rest at 
their noon on the continent which lies between East and West. The 
spirit of the East is of a synthetic and inner tendency; the spirit of 
the West is of an analytic and external tendency. America will be 
neither West nor East, but both in unity, a harmony of elevated emo- 
tional, intellectual, and will-power. The last-born child of History, 
like Joseph, is going to save all its brethren from starvation and 
'Ic-pair. Therein lies America's glory and her own salvation. 



Bishop Nicholai. 



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